The Maccionis Plan to Close Osteria del Circo

By the end of the year, the Maccioni family is likely to be without a restaurant base of operations in New York. They have just announced that Circo, formally known as Osteria del Circo, their West 55th Street restaurant, will close after dinner on Sunday. It was known for its lively circus décor by Adam Tihany and as a showcase for some of the recipes of Egidiana Maccioni, the wife of the patriarch, Sirio Maccioni.

Mauro Maccioni, one of the Maccioni sons, said the decision to close had to do with a dispute with the landlord that they could not resolve. The Maccionis are looking to relocate the restaurant nearby and make it a more rustic, Tuscan place. Circo is Italian for “circus,” a play on the name of their flagship. Le Cirque, which is circus in French.

The Maccionis also plan to close Le Cirque at the end of the year and expect to relocate it, too. In previous years, each of the times they moved Le Cirque, first from its original location on East 65th Street to the New York Palace Hotel and then to its current address in the Bloomberg Tower, they had Circo as a fallback for regular customers while Le Cirque was closed. Circo, which opened in 1996, has been a popular destination, especially for theatergoers.

The closing of both restaurants will leave the Maccioni’s cirque-less only in New York; there are branches in Las Vegas, India and the Middle East.